Physiotherapy and Therapeutic Exercise

First Coast Medical Center helps with physiotherapy and therapeutic exercise

Our licensed and trained therapy staff assists in your healing through several soothing and relaxing physiotherapy and therapeutic techniques. These therapies may help ease pain, reduce tissue swelling, relax tight muscles, stretch and strengthen muscles and help restore natural movement. This is a core component of our multidiscipline approach that helps us achieve great results with our patients.

There are many useful therapies for treatment of automobile accident injuries. Many patients benefit from a combination of several therapies that our physicians prescribe.

Some of the Therapies Used at First Coast Medical Center

Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) is designed to relax muscle spasms. This relaxing therapy uses a special current that reduces pain and increases functional mobility in injured muscles. EMS activates your body’s own nerves and muscles to reduce spasm and swelling and improve muscle function.

Heat therapy uses moist heat packs to gently raise the temperature of the injured soft tissues. This improves circulation in the tissues leading to relaxation of tight muscles and pain relief.

Intersegmental traction (IST) gently stretches the joints and muscles of the spine and assists in restoring natural movement. IST may accelerate your recovery by increasing circulation, reducing swelling and inflammation, relaxing muscle spasms, reducing stiffness and promoting disc healing. This therapy soothingly relieves muscle tension and joint stiffness as it restfully exercises the spine without effort. Most patients find this form of treatment to be relaxing and especially helpful.   

Ultrasound is a pain relieving, deep heating therapy that uses high-frequency sound waves to increase blood flow to an injured area. This brings nutrients to the area to promote healing and decrease swelling. It may be very helpful for some patients with acute injuries.

Therapeutic exercise is often used to help rebuild normal range or motion, stretch and strengthen injured muscles and restore balance. A variety of gentle exercise techniques are used to accomplish this. Our chiropractic physicians work with our trained therapy staff to help progress patients through several types of therapeutic exercises to help get them back to an active lifestyle.